The latest BioWare stream of Dragon Age: Inquisition was a PC affair, featuring hotbars, mouse and keyboard controls, graphics options, inventory and a whole bunch more. Mike Laidlaw and Cameron Lee had a look at the war table interface and missions, before heading to Emerald Graves for a little more gameplay.
Before we get to all that, let’s have a look at the PC graphics options that’ll be included in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I think I managed to snap an image of both the display options and more detailed graphics menu, so let’s see those.
That’s the basic display options. Not the ‘graphics API’ toggle at the bottom there, as Dragon Age: Inquisition will support AMD’s Mantle on relevant cards. It was implied that 4k resolutions would only be possible with Mantle, though that doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense so don’t consider that confirmed.
Here’s the top half of the more advanced graphics options.
And here’s the bottom part, showing options for things like ambient occlusion, post-process antialiasing and the like.
Key rebinding also looks to be fully possible in Dragon Age: Inquisition on PC. The shot above shows a small segment of that menu, but you get the idea.
Finally, on the menu front, here are a few gameplay options you can toggle in the game. Friendly fire and the like. These screens were actually shown towards the end of the stream, but I’ve put them first due to their high PC relevance.
What the stream actually began with was some dialogue interaction with Dragon Age: Inquisition’s specialists and a look at the war table interface. This is said to be pretty much your first meeting with your advisers, but nonetheless these next few screens may have minor spoilers.
So, as well as having numerical shortcuts on PC, the dialogue wheel comes with some handy icons to give you an idea of what kind of response you’re about to make. The one shown here (arms folded) is, I believe, the ‘strong’ or ‘stalwart’ type response. There were others shown, like ‘confused.’ Laidlaw says it’s possible to switch these icon prompts off if you don’t want to see them.
This one, as you can imagine, is for when you’re questioning people for more information. Also, witness the mouse and keyboard cam.
And here’s a random shot of Cullen, since he’s obviously a big Dragon Age favourite.
On to the war table, which is where you will guide your side ‘missions’ and ‘operations’ in Dragon Age: Inquisition. We’ll see some shots of both types, starting with the latter.
First, the prospective operation site is scouted. This costs a certain amount of ‘power,’ the resource players gather for the Inquisition and spend at the war table. Launching the scouting operation results in a brief cut-scene and then an after action report shown in the image below.
Now that the Hinterlands operation area has been successfully scouted, it becomes an option for your party to visit in a side-quest.
Missions, in contrast, are the events where you send one of your advisers away from a pre-determined period of time in return for things such as (above) more coin.
You select your required adviser (who may confer various benefits, or simply refuse to do that type of mission) and then wait the required period of real time for them to return.
Here’s another mission type involving Varric. You can see that Cullen is locked out of this one, meaning he’s not going to bother himself with it.
Levelling up the Inquisition itself also takes place at the war table. Different perks can be unlocked, some of which depend on the player performing prior actions.
This one, for example, requires you to have captured a keep at some point during your Dragon Age: Inquisition campaign.
After this point, Laidlaw and Lee moved away from the war table and loaded up a different save to look at both the PC UI and the Emerald Graves area of the game.
There’s the PC hotbar along the bottom there. It holds 8 skills on the left hand side, along with potions and various general tactical options (all flee from combat, etc) on the right. BioWare say it’s a fixed size, so you can’t make it larger or smaller.
One of the (apparently many) in-game mounts, a pretty relaxed looking Elk.
But enough Elks. Laidlaw briefly dipped into the Knight Enchanter talent tree. Here you can see Spirit Blade and its properties. On PC, it’s possible to drag any of these skills into the hotbar slots over on the right-hand side there.
Another Knight Enchanter skill. This time Resurgence, which can revive fallen allies in a fight.
The infamous Jar of Bees.
So, to some actual fighting. A couple of interesting PC-related details here. It’s possible to pause on PC without auto-activating the tactical camera. The mouse wheel offers a quick zoom in and out of the overhead-style camera, and it’s possible to move the camera around all over the place while still in ‘tactical’ mode.
Here, for example, it’s pretty zoomed in, but still in the tactical (real time with pause) style combat. Naturally, you can also pull right out for an overhead view as well.
Kind of like this.
A quick look at the PC inventory system too, where, again, items can be dragged and dropped or equipped with a double click. When asked about outfitting companions (such as Sera, here) Laidlaw confirmed that you can give them pretty much whatever weapons you want. Iron Bull had his double-handed weapon swapped out for a single hand club to demonstrate that he could be a shield wielder if you wanted (and if his skills were speced accordingly.)
Laidlaw also made some slightly vague comments about companions being able to specialise more, but only after “an event.” He wouldn’t say what this event was, so presumably it’s gameplay and quest related.
That was about it for new and PC-specific information in the stream. You should be able to watch the whole thing for yourself as soon as it’s archived at BioWare’s Twitch channel. Meanwhile, here’s another inventory shot.
Dragon Age: Inquisition will be released in mid-November.
